Between Àwòrán, Awòran and Ìwòran

The Perceived, the Perceiver and the Process of Perception

Yoruba Aesthetic Concepts as a Paradigm for Living

Distilling Insights
from
Olabiyi Yai, Babatunde Lawal and Craig Fashoro

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
“Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge”

1
 Abstract

This is a construction of a vision of human development from Yoruba aesthetic

ideas.

2
 Contents

The Meaning of this Work, its Sources and Inspiration 4

Image: Nyansapo from Velisa Africa 6

Quotations and Interpretations 7

Image: Good Morning, Sunrise by Victor Ekpuk 7

Voyagers in Eternity 7

Dynamism: Orí and Àrè 8

Àwòrán, Awòran and Ìwòran : The Perceived, the Perceiver and the
Process of Perception 9

Image: Opon Ifa 10

Approaching Life as Ere, becoming a Sculptor of Life 12

Becoming Ilèsanmi and Okosanmijulélo: Between Home and

Farm, Between the Familiar and the Unfamiliar 12

Image: Nyansapo from Wisdom Knot 13

Ìwà, Ilé and Orun: Forms of Home 14

Odo Laye, Life is a River 15

3
The Meaning of this Work, its Sources and Inspiration

This is a construction of a vision of human development from Yoruba aesthetic

ideas.

These ideas are distilled from the writings of Babatunde Lawal and Craig
Fashoro, organized in relation to Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai’s interpretation of Yoruba
aesthetic concepts.

Quotations from Yai’s essays are interspersed with quotations from Lawal’s
and Fashoro’s works, contextualized by my own reframing of the significance
of those quotations.

My comments are placed in square brackets. Quotations from Yai are

unmarked. Quotations from Lawal, on the significance of the Yoruba aesthetic
concepts àwòrán and awòran, are indicated by quotation marks. Those by
Fashoro on the Yoruba aesthetic term ere are also identified through quotation
marks. These quotes are at times edited for brevity.

My evocations of the kola nut, the egg, the proverb, the parable and the riddle
are transpositions of Yai’s references to Yoruba metaphors in his ''In Praise of
Metonymy: The Concepts of 'Tradition' and 'Creativity' in the Transmission of
Yoruba Artistry over Time and Space.''

The entire sequence is prefaced by quotations from other verbal and visual
contexts, in italics, that reinforce the thrust of the ideas of the vision I am
distilling from Yai’s work as complemented by expressions from Lawal and
Fashoro.

Visual art evoking ideas of creativity suggested by knotting and unknotting

represented through the elegant swirls of the Ghanaian Akan symbol Nyansapo,
as shown in various adaptations, and spirals of progression, recreation and
infinity in the circular template of the opon ifa from the Yoruba origin Ifa

4
system as well as the Nsibidi art of Victor Ekpuk, are invoked to complement
the soaring thought explored here.

This is part of a project exploring Yoruba aesthetics through a study of the

writings of Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal, two philosophers of
Yoruba art and aesthetics. Abiodun’s work is directly influenced by Yai and that
of Lawal is indirectly related to it.

The works of Lawal’s I draw from are “Àwòrán: Representing the Self and Its
Metaphysical Other in Yoruba Art” ( The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 3, 2001, pp.
498-526) complemented by “Divinity, Creativity and Humanity in Yoruba
Aesthetics” ( Literature & Aesthetics 15 (1):161-174 (2005).

I also quote from Craig Fashoro’s Ere-Yoruba, the website introducing his
project and book on Yoruba master carvers.

The Yai texts I use include his review of Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton III,
Rowland Abiodun and Allen Wardwell's Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art
and Thought, 1989, in African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 1., 1992, pp. 20+22+24+26+29.

Another is ''In Praise of Metonymy: The Concepts of 'Tradition' and 'Creativity'

in the Transmission of Yoruba Artistry over Time and Space'' in Research in
African Literatures , 1993, Vol. 24, No. 4, 1993, pp. 29-37 and in Rowland
Abiodun, Henry J. Drewal and John Pemberton III’s edited The Yoruba Artist:
New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts, 1994, 107-115.

The third is his ''Tradition and the Yoruba Artist'', in African Arts, Vol. 32, No. 1,
1999, pp. 32-35+93.

This piece is an expansion of a previous one “OríkìGenesis:Olabiyi Yai’s Oríkì

Philosophy as a Paradigm for Human Development.”

Both the previous composition and this expansion are developments from my
“Exploring Intersections of African Discourses: Celebrating Ọlabiyi Babalola
Yai, Scholar Extraordinaire of African Arts and African Philosophies, ” my first

5
Nyansapo from Velisa Africa

6
response to reading Yai in the light of exploring Yoruba aesthetics through
Abiodun, published in (academia.edu( PDF), Scribd (PDF), Facebook, LinkedIn,
Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde Lawal, Philosophers of Yoruba Art
blog, Twitter).

Quotations and Interpretations

Voyagers in Eternity

The months and days are the travelers of eternity. The years that come
and go are also voyagers. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading
a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself
is home.

From the opening lines of Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho’s The Narrow Road to
the Deep North. Quoting different translations of the lines. First two sentences
and last sentence by Donald Keene. Third sentence by Sam Hamill. All
from “Narrow Road to the Deep North, Opening Paragraph, Ten Translations”
at the website of David Barnill, scholar in nature writing. Other superb
resources, such as US and Japanese nature writing may be found on other
sections of the site. Accessed 8/31/2020.

7
[In the painting on the previous page, Good Morning, Sunrise by Victor
Ekpuk] the spiral is an Nsibidi sign [ a Nigerian ideographic system]
meaning journey, but it also suggests the sun and eternity. Ekpuk's
strong palette of warm reds, deep blacks, cool blues and whites
contributes to the overall sense of animation.
From the website of the Smithsonian exhibition, Writing and Graphic
Systems in African Art.

Dynamism: Orí and Àrè

Orí is essence, attribute, and quintessence… the uniqueness of

persons, animals, and things, their inner eye and ear, their sharpest
point and their most alert guide as they navigate through this world
and the one beyond.
The ideal artist is an àrè [ as understood in Yoruba]. No etymology of
the word has been attempted, but the most plausible one would
derive it from the verb re, which means to depart.

Lagbayi, the Yoruba transcendental sculptor, lived as an àrè. An àrè is

an itinerant, a permanent stranger precisely because he or she can be
permanent nowhere.

[An àrè is a person who approaches life as an] oríkì, an unfinished

and generative art enterprise. Oríkì [saluting and invoking the
essence and expression of cosmic and individual being in sentient
beings’ efforts to understand and navigate the cosmos in relation to
their own identity, a process] inseparable from ìtàn, to spread [in time
and space], to shine, irradiate, investigate, illuminate.
[ An àrè is committed to pìtàn, to splitting in further multiples the
kernels of possibility, separating and ingesting the two lobes of the
kola nut of being and becoming, hatching the egg of tomorrow in ways
8
visionary, splitting open the luminous core of the proverb that is life,
untying the knot of the parable of existence, unloosening its radiance,
de-riddling history, shedding light ] on human existence through
time and space [in the spirit of ] Òrúnmìlà [Eleri-Ipin, Witness to
Creation] Opìtàn ilẹ Ifẹ, He who deriddles ìtàn, i.e., unravels history
throughout Ifẹ territory [ the womb and consummation of terrestrial
time in Yoruba mythology.

Jacob Olupona's City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the
Imagination explores the depth and complexity of Ile-Ife in
the Yoruba cosmos.

My "Ile-Ife : Geographical, Affective, Metaphysical and Mystical

Interpretations by Awo Falokun" is a very short but imagistically
evocative excursion into these ideas from one perspective].

Àwòrán, Awòran and Ìwòran: The Perceived, the Perceiver and

the Process of Perception

[The artist is anyone committed to shaping life according to the

principles of àwòrán, awòran and ìwòran.

Such a person is particularly sensitive to what they see, hear and feel
and to the process of engaging these perceptions.

They are alive to reality as ‘’a work of art…crafted to appeal to the

eyes, relate a representation to its subject, and, at the same time,
convey messages that may have aesthetic, social, political, or spiritual
import.”

They are particularly attuned to the need to engage with reality

through a ‘’creative process [represented by ] an artist's preliminary
contemplation of raw material.’’

9
Opon Ifa

10
They are deeply clued to the invocation of “the pictorial memory
necessary for visualizing and objectifying the subject, the use of the
mind's eye to visualize and give material form to an idea,’’
imagination, vision, enabling power and tools of thought and action,
used in interpreting reality and creating schemata or templates in
terms of which these encounters are processed.

The subject being engaged is with is known as àwòrán.

The process of seeing is ìwòran.

Such sensitives are also keenly alert to themselves as awòran, the

person experiencing the sensation, the perceiver, the beholder, the
actor upon reality.

Distinctive but related meanings distinguished by marks indicating

tonal inflections, the “root verb wò (to look) [remaining] intact in the
two words, àwòrán and awòran, linking the beholder to the beheld”
[ in ìwòran].

The known, the knower and the means of knowledge, as a similar

process is depicted in Indian philosophy.

An “interface of the visible and invisible, the tangible and intangible,

the known and unknown in which the act of looking and seeing is
much more than a perception of objects.”

A “process of self-reflection and self-re-creation, in which the human

becomes the divine, No humanity, no Deity.”

Life as “a ritual process, reenacting the archetypal act of divine

creation, linking the physical to the metaphysical and the human to
the divine.”

11
 Approaching Life as Ere, becoming a Sculptor of Life

Through such sensitivity, one becomes a sculptor of life, a participant

in the shaping of existence as ere, a Yoruba term for free standing
sculpture, “meant to be viewed on all sides,’’ a term embracing
“physical statuary [as well as] the artistic, the cultural, the
architectural, the secular [ and] the sacred and spiritual aspects of
the art of carving,” an example of “canons of Yoruba iconology [a
discipline ] infinite in forms, styles, motifs and aesthetic values. ’’ ]

Becoming Ilèsanmi and Okosanmijulélo: Between Home and

Farm, Between the Familiar and the Unfamiliar

[ Such an artist is both an] Ilèsanmi (I am better off in my hometown)

[and an] Okosanmijulélo (Oko san mi ju ilé lo: I am better off on the
farm than in the hometown).

The "farm,’’ oko, a metaphor for that which is novel, not ordinary, far
from home [is thereby contrasted with] ilé, "home," a metaphor for
the daily, the familiar, the given.

Artists are at their best when they are literally "not at home." The
opposite of the Western saying "Charity begins at home."

For these artists "charity begins abroad": "Oko san mi ju ilé lo," [ the
wild novelties of the farm as opposed to the settled familiarities of the
everyday].

[Yet such an artist should be able to be at home everywhere, in all

circumstances.

12
Nyansapo from Wisdom Knot

13
 Ìwà, Ilé and Orun: Forms of Home

That is so because the àrè is always on a journey. Aye loja orun ni ile,
the world is a marketplace, orun, the place where existence
originates, is home, it is said, but even orun is not a permanent
destination, because orun must be departed from in order for one to
participate in the dynamism of the world of space and time that orun
cannot replace, just as as the spatio-temporal world needs orun for
its own existence, two symbiotic polarities existing as the body and
its heartbeat.

If there is any true home, would it not be ìwà, as understood in the

expression] ìwà l,èwá, variously translated as "Character is beauty,"
"Existence is beauty," "Immortality is perfect existence," and
"Essential nature is beauty" ?
The role or essence (ìwà) of art in Yoruba culture is to create beauty
by activating and making sensible the noumenal solidarity of the
various facets and dimensions of the world, the individual, the
society, and the supernatural, which are and must be made to be
seen/sensed/heard as tributaries of the same big river.
[Yet even ìwà) is dynamic, more spiral than straight line, undergoing
change while rooted in an organizing core of possibility].

In the Yoruba world view, oko [farm] is the antonym of ilé [ home]. In
terms of artistic practice and discourse, the best way to recognize
reality and engage it is to depart from it.

[Yet, even as we depart from the settled familiarities of home, we

realize that the farm sustains the home by feeding it, indicating the
mutual sustenance of the settled and the distant, the domestic and the
wild, the nearby and the far away, as zones of knowing].

14
 Odo Laye, Life is a River

Àrès always seek to depart from current states of affairs. They go

about (re) and bifurcate or pass (ya) constantly in life[ in terms that
might not always be physical and geographical but certainly
cognitive, expressed in their constantly reconstructed perspectives
on the world in the face of the recognition of the multifarious
immensity represented by the expression ] Odo laye ‘’life is a river.’’
Who can encompass a river?

15